How George Clooney Made $325 Million Last Year Without Starring In A Single Movie

One of the coolest cats in Hollywood has made the rest of the pack look like chumps this year without reciting a single line from a script, as revealed by Forbes in this year's list of highest-paid actors.

As much we wish this was something to do with a particular heist in Ocean's 11, the key to Clooney's haul lies in his "side hustle". We recently ran a feature on how Clooney and Rande Gerber built a tequila empire called Casamigos, and then decided to cash in, offloading the business for roughly $US1 billion in June last year.

From what started a simple dissatisfaction with existing Mexican tequilas, the pair started experimenting with their own batches, pumping out 700 samples in a few months before deciding on the right concoction. For a few years, they shared their creation only among friends and family before pulling the trigger to scale up for mass production and retail sale.

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With the rankings now out, we can see how far this pushed Clooney in relation to his peers. Second place on the list was Dwayne Johnson, who only netted half as much, followed by Robert Downey Jr with a comparatively pedestrian 25%. That's a sizeable margin considering these lads are the heaviest hitters in the film industry. Also appearing on the list was Chris Hemsworth with $US64.5 million and Chris Evans with $US34 million.

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Clooney's attitude towards the grind is clear: "Acting used to be how I paid the rent, but I sold a tequila company for a billion fucking dollars. I don’t need money". If this isn't a testament to the side hustle, then I don't know what is. If you needed some words of wisdom from another player of the game, here are Warren Buffet's thoughts:

“If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die."